


Part VI: With Q, All Things Are Possible

by jenlcb



Series: Delayed Gratification [6]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Courage, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Orphans, Strong Female Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 04:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11073768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenlcb/pseuds/jenlcb
Summary: Negan and T'Mollek hatch a dangerous and deadly plan to retrieve the orphans from the Romulan ship. T'Mollek and Q come to terms with their relationship.





	1. Pre-Show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Synapsida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synapsida/gifts).



> Thank you, @Synapsida for your feedback and support! Can't wait to catch up on the rest of your works!

It was business as usual on the bridge of the _Enterprise_ until Worf got the call from the shuttle bay.

“Captain!” he announced. “A shuttlecraft has just been reported missing.”

The rest of the bridge crew, plus Q, snapped to attention and turned their collective gaze on the view screen. The shuttlecraft could be seen flying away from the ship.

Picard took a seat in his chair at the center of the bridge. “Computer,” he said with a knowing scowl. “Location of Jaxon Traegar.”

“Jaxon Traegar is not aboard the _Enterprise_ ,” the computer stated.

“What about . . . ‘Negan’?” he asked, knowing that even in the 23rd century, one occasionally had to think like a computer, rather than the other way around.

“Please specify parameters,” the computer requested politely.

“Who jaked the shuttlecraft?” Q demanded in annoyance. Picard glared at him over his shoulder.

“Jaxon Traegar and T’Mollek O’Reilly,” the computer helpfully replied.

“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” Picard muttered under his breath.

“What the hell?” Riker snapped. “Are they taking it back to Algalon?”

“Captain,” Data cut in. “A Romulan ship appears to be uncloaking.”

“Counselor Troi,” Picard said. “Is T’Mollek being forced against her will?”

Troi stood and looked at the shuttle on the screen, trying to hone in on T’Mollek’s emotional signals. “Uncertain,” she said, frowning slightly. “She’s terrified. But I also sense . . . determination. From both of them. A mutual admiration. Almost . . . affection.”

Q glowered, but he was ready to hear the truth. “Are they in love?”

“I . . . don’t feel comfortable making that assessment,” she said hesitantly.

Q glared at Data from across the bridge. “Really, this is the most _ridiculous_ love quadrangle in all of recorded history.” Data remained oblivious.

“Stockholm Syndrome,” Riker guessed.

“Possibly,” Troi said. “She’s always been difficult to read.”

“Should we hail the shuttle?” Worf asked eagerly.

Picard felt frustrated by this turn of events. He still fully trusted in T’Mollek but his every instinct was to hail the craft and determine what was going on. He decided to trust but verify.

“Open hailing frequency.”

The frequency was opened but resulted in nothing more than faintly distorted sounds.

“The ion field is still preventing a signal,” Worf growled. “We could try beaming them back to the _Enterprise_.”

“No, Worf,” Picard said, defeated. “The ion field won’t allow that either.”

Understanding the captain’s dilemma, Worf made a few adjustments on his control panel and announced, “Phasers at the ready.”

Q hastily stood up, looking back and forth between Worf and the captain. He stood behind Picard. “She knows what she’s doing, Jean-Luc,” he said quietly, urgently.

“Does she?” Picard asked almost rhetorically.

Q nodded. He actually meant it.

“Can you go to her?” Picard asked. “Help her?”

Q waved his hands in front of his face, warding off this suggestion. “Nope. This one’s all hers.”

Picard sighed. “Stand down. Shields up.”

“But, Captain!” Worf protested. “She is a Romulan, heading toward a Romulan ship with a Federation prisoner. She’s clearly a traitor.”

“She’s no traitor,” Picard said with quiet certainty, still watching the shuttle on the view screen. “She has a plan. The die has been cast. We’ll wait and see how this plays out.”

Riker disagreed. “Captain, I don’t think—”

Picard silenced him with a raised hand, not taking his eyes off the view screen. Q sat in the chair next to the captain and put his chin on his fist, tensely watching the screen as well.

***

“Are you ready?” T’Mollek asked.

“Yeah,” Negan said. “Do it.”

T’Mollek pressed a button on the panel to begin recording.

“This is Negan,” he said confidently. “Of Earth. A.K.A. Jaxon Traegar, of Algalon. Former wrestler known as Specter and acting president of the penal colony on Algalon. Being of . . . sound mind and body . . . and under no duress . . . I wish to make a full confession of my crimes . . . .”

He reiterated what he had shared with T’Mollek during the mind meld. When he was finished, T’Mollek recorded her own confession.

“And this’ll reach ‘em eventually?” Negan asked when she was through.

“I left a message for Captain Picard from the brig, which he should be receiving about now. It explains where the disrupter beam is located on Algalon. LaForge and Data will figure out how to deactivate it. These confessions will be waiting. I also warned them about the Romulan team on their way to the compound.”

“I still can’t believe they haven’t fired on us,” Negan said.

“You heard my confession,” T’Mollek said with deep shame and regret. “Captain Picard trusts me. Wholeheartedly.”

She pulled her bone knife from the back of her boot and cut the stitches that held closed the knife wounds on her arms. She pulled the stitches out and the skin apart. Blood oozed out of the wounds, re-soaking her sleeves.

Then she used the knife to cut the colorful twine band from her wrist. Negan held out his hand and she sliced his black wristband as well. They unraveled the twine and tied the pieces together to make one long strand. Negan handed her the Specter charm that had hung from his wristband.

“For luck.”

“Don’t you need it as much as I do?” she asked.

“You’re going into the lion’s den,” he said. “I’m just standing outside it.”

She took the charm and slipped it into her boot. Then she stood and turned her back to him, her hands behind her back. He tied the string of twine around her wrists.

“Tighter,” she demanded.

He tightened the string until it cut into her skin. She didn’t react. “You OK?” he asked.

She nodded.

To lighten the mood, Negan drawled in a low voice, “We should try this again under different circumstances.”

“I do not think so,” she said seriously.

“I’unno,” he said cajolingly. “I think you’d like it.”

There was a long silence as he finished tying her hands behind her back. Then she said thoughtfully, “We shall see.”

Negan gave her a surprised, wicked grin. “Well, awright . . . .”

She gave him a sidelong look and a miniature half-smirk. They each took a deep breath and let the tension settle in silence for a moment. Negan looked down at her with her hands behind her back. He reached over and brushed a lock hair out of her eyes. He wanted to continue touching her, so he put his hand on her neck and gave it a gentle massage. She leaned away and gave him a suspicious side eyed look.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at her a little defensively, but smiled. “Acupressuring your Wind Mansion,” he said sincerely. “Thought it might help relax you.”

“This is not a time for relaxation,” she said. He moved his hand away, and she added, “But thank you.”

They were nearly there. She took a deep breath and got down on her knees next to him. She pushed her eyebrows up and together, and recalling the physical sensations that she had experienced during her recent emotional lapse, she adjusted her breathing such that tears formed in her eyes.

Negan stood up straight, pulling himself to his full height, and assumed an aggressive posture—his legs slightly apart, his chest puffed up, bending backward slightly at the waist. He pushed his face into an angry scowl. Then he glanced down at her at his feet.

“I could get used to this,” he teased in a low voice. “Bein’ knelt for.”

“Stop it,” she muttered, her facial expression unchanged.

“All right, all right,” he chuckled, then resumed his swaggering posture and took a deep breath. “You sure this’ll work?” he asked.

“I believe so,” she said. As much as Picard trusted her, she trusted Q.

“OK. Time to call home.”

He leaned forward and pressed a button, hailing the Romulan scout ship. The frequency was miraculously opened and his voice turned hardened, angry, tight. “Commandeered Starfleet shuttlecraft to Romulan vessel.”

The greeting was met with silence. T’Mollek’s heart sank. For a moment, she had actually believed that the communication would go through despite the disrupter beam, just as the Enterprise had been magicked into orbit and cloaked when she needed them most. But it had not. She would have to think of something else. Hope that the Romulans would somehow open their shuttle bay to their craft without question.

T'Mollek cast her eyes downward, the tears falling to the floor genuine now. Then: 

“This is the Romulan vessel,” Mirek said, her voice dripping with intrigue.

Although neither of them showed it, both T’Mollek’s and Negan’s hearts leapt.

“Change of plans,” Negan snarled. “T'Mollek killed my daughter, so I’m turning her over to you now.”

T’Mollek wept, copious tears streaming down her face. “Please, I didn't mean for anyone to die,” she begged. “I thought the treatment would save the children. Please! You have to understand!”

“Shut up, you sniveling bitch,” Negan said, giving her a backhand to the nose, knocking her to the floor.

She gasped as her nose broke and blood flowed into her mouth from both the inside and the outside. She spat blood and tears.

“Your incompetence and shitty judgment killed my baby,” Negan continued. “Now you’re gonna pay for what you did.”

“This is the mutt who murdered my son on Nimbus III?” Mirek snarled.

“Yeah, she’s two and oh for killing innocent kids,” Negan growled. “I have the evidence to prove she killed your son. The bone knife she used to slice him up beyond recognition.” He held the weapon up for her to see.

T’Mollek had managed to get back to her knees even with her hands behind her back.

Mirek address T’Mollek. “I look forward to meeting you face to face— _human_.” It was the cruelest thing she could think to call her.

The screen went black. The shuttle flew closer to the Romulan ship.

“Can’t believe that worked,” Negan muttered, and T’Mollek wondered briefly, her heart pounding, if Q had allowed the communication to go through—or if _she_ had.

“Are you ready?” he asked in a low voice.

T’Mollek closed her eyes, took a deep breath, paused, and then nodded. Negan punched her—hard—in the eye. She faltered backward, then righted herself, inclining her head to him.

“How does it look?” she asked.

Negan scrutinized it. “It's beginning to swell, but . . .” He shook his head doubtfully, regretfully.

“Understood,” she said. She took a few steps backward. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

T’Mollek ran toward him at full bore. He put up a fist and hit but, but he was clearly pulling back. T’Mollek’s heart filled with emotion as she realized Negan’s soft side.

_We could have been a family._

“Again,” T’Mollek said, glaring at him disapprovingly.

Negan hit her again, knocking her down. Her vision went black for a moment. She opened her eyes and put her head up, trying to focus on him.

“Sweetheart, you are takin’ this like a champ,” he said softly.

“Now kick me in the ribs,” she commanded from her prone position.

He kicked her.

 _“Actually_ kick me,” she taunted.

He kicked her harder.

She scoffed in exasperation, then said ferociously, “I made your baby girl think she was dying.”

The force of the kick did not surprise her; the subsequent vomiting did.

She stood. “Your turn.”

“Excuse me?”

“Mirek will never believe that I didn’t fight back,” T’Mollek told him.

He shrugged with a resigned grin. “All right. Gimme your best.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Try me.”

“Very well.”

She ran toward him and head butted him, knocking him backward.

“Fuck!” he yelled, wincing.

While he was caught off-guard, she kicked him in the face, her hands still behind her back.

“Fucking _fuck!_ ” he cried, spitting out a piece of tooth.

“Come after me,” she commanded.

“Heh?” he muttered in pained confusion.

She charged him slowly to give him a chance to react. He reached out instinctively to protect himself and she kneed him in the groin. “Mother _FUCK!_ ” he screamed, and pushed her down purely out of self-preservation. She, however, grabbed hold of his leg with hers as she fell, pulling him down hard on top of her. She was pinned, their faces close. She wanted to kiss his wounded face and take away the pain. But instead—

“WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK ARE YOU— _FUCK_!”

Even with her hands tied behind her back, she had thoroughly kicked his ass.

After the staged attack, they stood regarding one another as the shuttle approached the Romulan ship. He looked at her bloody, battered face, her swollen eye, her shattered nose. “You’re beautiful,” he said softly and sincerely, his gravelly voice even more so with emotion. “Inside and out.” She could tell that he meant it.

She looked at the knot on his forehead, the broken bottom tooth, and the chunk of flesh she’d bitten from his chin. “Likewise,” she said.

Needless to say, she also meant it.


	2. Showtime 2: Romulan Showdown

As the shuttle door slowly rose to greet the Romulan guards, Negan whispered, “Can you forgive me? For what happened to your parents?”

T’Mollek sniffled, bleeding, her eye swollen shut. “We can discuss this later.”

“No. We can’t,” he said quickly. “If you don’t forgive me, I’ll understand.”

“This is . . . not the time for this discussion.”

“Just a simple yes or—”

The door was open and Mirek stepped forward, flanked by guards. Frustration fueling his masquerade, Negan roughly dragged T’Mollek backward by the hands, pulling the restraints that bound her wrists. He threw her to the floor at Mirek’s feet. The commander grinned maliciously at the blood and mucus and vomit and spittle covering the younger woman’s face and tattered t-shirt. She kicked her in the side for good measure. T'Mollek grunted in pain and lay whimpering and unmoving, mentally willing her ribs back into position.

Mirek instructed a guard to take T’Mollek to the prison cell. He picked up her restrained hands as if she were a bag of garbage, straining her arms in the wrong direction, and dragged her backward behind him, leaving a trail of blood.

_Thy body does not matter. Thou shall be degraded. Thy honor decimated._

The guard dragged T’Mollek to the brig and dropped her roughly to the floor onto her face. She weakly lifted her head and viscous bloody fluid poured from her mouth and nose in a long trail. One eye was completely swollen closed and the vision remaining in her other was blurred. He unlocked the metal cage, preparing to toss the prisoner in, when she looked up at him pathetically. A hitched breath and then a sob escaped her lips. He grabbed her roughly by the arms to pull her up, and she looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. She hesitated, then made a mental suggestion for him to do something he already wanted to do. He stared back into her eyes, then grinned and began to remove his tunic.

“No!” a young girl cried sharply.

T’Mollek looked up and saw two children in the brig. Doston and a teenaged girl, about sixteen. They had risen to their feet when she was dragged in and were standing at the bars of the door.

_Tenna._

“Look away,” T’Mollek begged them. “LOOK AWAY!”

With more of his anatomy exposed than previously, the Romulan reached for T’Mollek. He reached for the back of her head with both his large hands, and as her head was roughly brought down toward his waist, T’Mollek simultaneously twisted her body and with her hands, which were still tied behind her, pulled the bone knife from the back of her boot. In one fluid motion, she stood, twisted to the left, and with a sideways twirl eviscerated the Romulan. Evisceration was much easier with a sharp blade, she thought distantly. Still grinning in anticipation, the guard’s lifeless body fell to the floor.

T’Mollek stood, gathered her balance, and looked at the children, who were standing agape in horror.

“I said to look away,” she admonished. They stared at her.

She turned her back to the youngsters, holding the knife to them. “If you would . . .”

The teenager took the knife and cut the bindings from T’Mollek’s wrists.

“Thank you,” she said. “You must be Tenna?”

The girl nodded vaguely, then looked in horror at the blood and the gore at their feet. “You . . . _r-really_ killed him.”

“It would have been cleaner,” T’Mollek said apologetically, blinking her one eye, “but my depth perception is off.”

Tenna looked down at Doston, who smiled bravely, if shakily, up at her.

“Gather the weapons,” T’Mollek instructed, sniffling gently through the broken cartilage in her bruised and swollen nose.

She wiped the blood from the bone knife onto the back of the dead Romulan’s trousers. Tenna picked up two disruptor pistols and a serrated knife from the Romulan’s belt. She looked at the knife and then at T’Mollek. She kept the knife for herself and handed T’Mollek and Doston the disruptors.

“Let's go,” T’Mollek said, and they walked out of the brig. “The next one won’t be this easy.”

***

T’Mollek led the children through the narrow corridors of the small Romulan scout ship. There would most likely not be many twists and turns until they reached the bridge, which was typically on the farthest side of the vessel from the brig. The trio heard footsteps marching in precision and ducked behind two corridors on opposite sides of the corridor—the orphans were together on one side and T’Mollek was on the other. T’Mollek held up her hand giving them the tactical signal to wait for the patrolmen to pass. She pointed to Doston and held up two fingers, then pointed to herself and held up two fingers, indicating the number of guards each was responsible for taking out. They marched past, two by two. On her signal, Doston and T’Mollek simultaneously popped out into the hallway behind them and fired at the two soldiers bringing up the rear. The blasts were so strong, they destroyed the two Romulans in front of them as well.

Tenna and Doston entered the hallway and high-fived one another in triumph. They turned and held up their palms to T’Mollek. She hesitated, then slapped them each five, too.

She indicated Doston’s disruptor pistol. “Be careful with that,” she said. “It took out two at a time.”

She placed a hand to her ear to adjust the earbud. “Negan is on the bridge,” she told them. “The commander said there are eight Romulans on the ship. Herself, her second in command, the prison guard, now dead, and five other guards. We just took out four. There is one more to contend with before we get to the bridge.”

***                                                                                          

They progressed, one at a time, through the corridors, ducking behind walls. T’Mollek sent Tenna ahead and looked behind her. She was just about to send Doston when a guard rounded the corner and spotted Tenna.

“How did you get out of the brig?” he asked with a leer. “You must have missed me. Don't worry, I won't tell the commander. This will be our secret.”

Doston pointed his disruptor at the guard, but T’Mollek stopped him, shaking her head. He remembered the wide range of destruction the disruptor was capable of, and he held it down.

When the guard attempted to place Tenna in a vulnerable position, T’Mollek stepped forward calmly and quickly, reaching for his neck with her hand. Simultaneously, however, Tenna swung the serrated knife from behind her back and stabbed him in the belly. He doubled over, and Tenna brought the knife up into his eye, quickly dispatching him.

T’Mollek was slightly taken aback. “I was . . . going to perform the nerve pinch, but . . . your method was definitely more efficacious.”

“We had . . . history,” Tenna said grimly, looking at him.

“So I gathered,” T’Mollek said, studying Tenna’s facial expression and body language for signs of psychological trauma. “I’ll have my friend Deanna speak to you about this when we get back to my ship.”

They continued to walk. They didn’t expect to meet anyone else in the corridor, so they relaxed somewhat. Then T’Mollek put her hand to her ear.

“Oh no,” she said gravely.

“What is it?” Tenna asked.

She turned to the children, speaking quickly and urgenty. “If you come with me to the bridge, we’re fighting to the death. If you stay here, I can’t guarantee I’ll come back for you.”

“I’m in,” Tenna said, and Doston nodded, his eyes wide.

“Then run!”

***

When they reached the door at end of the corridor, the voices T’Mollek was listening to in her earbuds had reached maximum clarity, so she ascertained it to be the bridge. Without pausing to verify, she blew open the door with her pistol. She recognized the two beefy Romulan guards holding Negan. They were two of the three who had attacked him in the Algalon capital city. The third must have died from his injuries. Mirek, who had been expecting her, was smirking as she held Negan’s transparent transmitter, which she had pulled from the side of his face. An elderly Romulan man was holding a knife to Negan’s throat, his face unreadable. The children screamed and T’Mollek stopped short, lowering the arm that held the disruptor

“The guest of honor has at last arrived!” Mirek said with glee. “I take it that blood isn’t all yours?”

T’Mollek pointed the disruptor at Mirek with a determined expression.

“As you must know, if you kill me, you kill Negan,” Mirek crooned. “Drop the disruptors and kick them to Galan. Then we can discuss what happens next.” She indicated toward the elderly man with a cock of her head.

T’Mollek hesitated but did as she was told. She nodded to Doston, who did the same.

Galan picked up the disruptors, handed one to Mirek, and said, “I will take the children back where they belong.” He took Doston by the arm and pointed his disruptor at Tenna. The children were brave but discouraged. They had been prepared for a fight to the death.

“Look what I found!” Mirek said, holding up Negan’s transmitter and earpiece in her hand. “I wonder where this transmits to? And how you found us so easily?”

She stuck a finger into T’Mollek’s ear, cutting her with a long, sharp nail. She clawed out the tiny earpiece. A trail of green blood trickled out.

“No reaction? No cries?” she asked wide-eyed. “This isn't as much fun as I'd hoped. I was told you were weak and fearful. You certainly did put on a good show for us.”

“So what is next for me?” T’Mollek asked unflinchingly. “A Romulan trial? Torture? Execution?”

“Worse,” Mirek smiled. “I'm taking you home to your family.”

“My family? Why?”

Mirek circled T’Mollek, touching various parts of her body as though she were sizing up livestock at an auction. “You are smaller than I had expected,” she said, ignoring her question. “How many blows do you think it will take to kill her, Negan? Three? Four? I don’t know . . . she looks sturdy to me. Perhaps five.” She looked at T’Mollek, whose face showed no expression. “It’s been a long time since I’ve used a lissival. Perhaps it won’t be as quick as that.”

T’Mollek still didn’t react.

“Oh, please,” Mirek said impatiently. “You must want to know what a lissival is. Tell her, Negan.”

“Go to hell.”

“Tell her or we demonstrate on your little girl.”

Negan knew Elgie was safe aboard the _Enterprise_ , but the thought still made his heart pound with fury and hatred. He decided to play the fear card, as per the plan. “It’s essentially what I used to kill Mirek’s guard with on Algalon,” he said grimly. “More of a cudgel, but wrapped in twisted metal spikes. The damage it causes is . . .”

“Exquisite,” Mirek cooed. “It was your weapon of choice on Romulus, was it not?”

Negan’s mouth twitched. It was something he preferred not to remember—the hammering sensation of power the lissival had produced deep down in him. It was nearly sexual.

“And she wants to kill you with that while your loved ones watch,” Negan said, recalling the way he had gained followers on Romulus before the Reunification leaders in his band decided to make a science experiment out of him. He had led with equal parts charisma and intimidation.

“And then, of course, I’ll kill Elgie,” Mirek said cheerfully. “It’s not that I _want_ to kill that adorable little mongrel, of course. But you both killed _my_ sons. It’s only fair. Blood vengeance and all that.”

Negan called Mirek the foulest of names as he struggled against the guards.

“Now this is interesting,” Mirek said slowly, turning to Negan. “I threaten to crush the skull of his darling little baby, and he reacts by name calling and a half-hearted struggle against two of the three guards he soundly trounced not two weeks ago? It’s almost as if he knows something I don’t know. Could it be . . . that the _Enterprise_ has returned and Elgie is safe and sound and protected in her own cozy, warm little bed?” She turned up her mouth in mockery.

“Did you really think we were only monitoring their body heat?” she laughed. “Or that we were the only Romulan ship orbiting Algalon?”

Negan’s face fell.

“Sweet Negan . . .” she clucked. “We’ve already sent an invasion party to the _Enterprise_ to retrieve your little Elgie. She’s in our interrogation room now.” She turned to T’Mollek. “I’m surprised _this_ one didn’t hear her cries in the corridor on her way here from the brig. Or perhaps the little girl had fallen unconscious by that point.”

She pressed a button on the console and Elgie’s voice filled the bridge. “DZAXON! Make it stop,” she begged through her sobs. “P’ease make it stop! Why is dis happening to me?”

Mirek smiled smugly as Negan screamed obscenities and fought against the guards in earnest.

“Negan, stop!” T’Mollek said urgently. She recognized those cries from two nights before. Elgie was asking why she couldn’t stop vomiting. Either Mirek had been surveilling Negan’s home as well or she had taken the recording from the earpiece Negan had been wearing.

But Negan had been distracted and sleep deprived that night and did not make the connection. His paternal strength was more than Mirek had anticipated. He broke free from the guards and lunged at her.

T’Mollek, who was standing without being held but carrying no weapons, screamed and leaped at Negan to prevent him from attacking Mirek with only his bare hands. As Negan pitched forward toward Mirek, she and her two guards pulled out their disruptors. Only Mirek, however, unhesitatingly fired at Negan, with no regard whatsoever for her loyal crew members who stood just behind him.

As if in slow motion, T’Mollek felt a hand grasp her shoulder and yank her back, away from the carnage that she was witnessing and trying to prevent. Negan was struck point blank in the chest with the disruptor blast.

_Please!_

The energy tore his body apart, disintegrating his tissues, turning his corporeal form into vapor. In the last split second of his existence, his eyes found T’Mollek’s, silently asking forgiveness.

The guards behind him were also vaporized.

T’Mollek was held back by Galan, who calmly advised Mirek, “The children have been taken care of.” As he said the word “children,” T’Mollek felt his thin hand spasm slightly against her shoulder.

“Good,” Mirek said harshly. “Now, take care of this one.”

Although she didn’t fight him, T’Mollek reflexively pulled back from Galan’s touch. “Easy, my child,” he said almost gently. At the word “child,” his hand twitched spasmodically again. She glanced down and noticed he had moved his arm away from his hip, from which conspicuously hung the hilt of her own bone knife. He kept his eyes on Mirek, holding T’Mollek at an angle that hid the knife from the commander’s view.

T’Mollek was just contemplating what to do about this situation when a hailing sound distracted them. Galan reached for a button on the console to answer the hail.

“Don't communicate with them,” Mirek said impatiently. “Blow them out of space.”

“My apologies, Commander, but I cannot,” Galan said, stepping away from the console without pressing the button.

“What do you mean, you cannot?” she asked in disbelief. “Where is your loyalty?” Just because she’d let her entire crew die within the last hour did not mean that this old relic could change sides now.

“My loyalty is to my family,” he said simply.

“Your family . . . ?” Mirek had a terrible feeling about this.

Galan gave T’Mollek a gentle push, much like a bird pushing its fledgling from the nest. All in an instant, T’Mollek contemplated violence and death and revenge and horror and forgiveness and retribution—all in the split second it took her to pull her knife from Galan’s hilt and stab the commander through the eye, twisting it for good measure, then throwing her to the ground by the hair.

It was less of a blood vengeance thing as it was thoroughness and seeing the job through to the end.

Rather nonchalantly and without missing a beat, T’Mollek turned to Galan and repeated, “Your loyalty is to your _family_?”

Galan gave her a gentle smile. “My loyalty is to you, Ceanna. My great-granddaughter.”

At that, T’Mollek raised her bloody knife to him—the real criminal and ultimate origin of her family drama. The man who had kidnapped and raped her great-grandmother, leaving their daughter a bastard orphan refugee on a distant planet to fend for herself, creating a seemingly never-ending legacy of shame and guilt and illegitimacy. The forefather of outcasts.

“Let me clarify!” he chuckled, holding up his hands. “It’s true that the Vulcans who were captured and taken to Hellguard all those years ago—and the children they were forced to produce—suffered horribly. But several of us clandestinely reached out to the Vulcan council and helped aid in their rescue. I attempted to keep in touch with each of the children who were rescued. Your grandmother was the most fortunate of those—she managed to grow up with some meaning in her life. She grew to be an impressive Starfleet officer.”

“Did you know her mother?”

“I did,” Galan said. “T’Hana. She was incredibly courageous.” He cast his eyes downward in respect. “Her sister T’Sharr has made vengeance a lifetime pursuit—misguided though she is.”

“What do you mean?”

“She sent you to assassinate Negan, did she not?” he said, not really asking.

“How did you—?”

“Who do you think told her where Negan was?” Galan asked. “I’ve been Mirek’s second in command for years. I kept her away from his trail until you were ready for this mission.”

“You _wanted_ me to carry out his assassination?”

“No, but I—”

He was interrupted by a burst of light and a man wearing some sort of iron armor and helmet and wielding a sword. He gave a loud battle cry.

“And who are you?” Galan asked, amused.

The knight spoke grandly. “You can call me . . . Deus . . . Ex . . . MACHINA!” He lifted the sword high above his head.

“It’s over, Q,” T’Mollek said quietly. “We’re safe.”

“It's . . . over?” Q asked, disappointed, lifting his helmet’s face plate. Then he saw her battered, bloodied, swollen face for the first time.

“Oh, Tamale,” he said softly, “what happened to your . . . .” He gingerly touched her cheek below her swollen-shut eye. She shook her head and held her hand up to stop him.

“Ah yes,” he said understanding. “First rule of Fight Club.” Glancing down at Mirek’s bloody corpse, he remarked quietly through clenched teeth, “Tyler Durden’s got nothin’ on _you_ . . .”

T’Mollek cleared her throat. “I think introductions are in order,” she said. “This is Sub-commander Galan.”

“Galan Tomalak,” he clarified as they shook hands.

“Tomalak?” Q asked, looking at the doctor. “T’Mollek? I don’t see a family resemblance.”

“It’s in name and history only,” Galan smiled evasively. “And this is . . .?”

“This is . . . my friend, Q,” T’Mollek said. “He’s a member of the Q continuum.”

“Ah, you’re the Laughing God,” Galan said in recognition, surprising T’Mollek considerably. “I thought you were a legend.”

“Only in his own mind,” T’Mollek muttered.

“Uh, what was that I heard about an assassination?” Q asked casually, lounging on a bridge chair, crossing his legs loudly in his armor.

Galan looked at T’Mollek, who gave him a blasé “go ahead and tell him” gesture. She limped to the commander’s chair and sat down weakly.

“T’Mollek and her aunt T’Sharr have been carefully orchestrating Negan’s assassination ever since he and Mirek conspired to murder T’Mollek’s parents,” Galan explained.

“What?!” Q exclaimed, sitting up straight, his armor clanking.

“Which he didn’t actually do,” T’Mollek cut in, defending Negan.

“Mirek was the only one who wanted T’Auvilyn and Jake O’Reilly dead,” Galan said.

“And me, after I killed her son at the café,” she added.

“Subsequently, T’Sharr sent T’Mollek to Algalon to assassinate Negan.”

“But the right opportunity never presented itself,” T’Mollek said.

Q was looking back and forth throughout this conversation like a spectator at a tennis match. “Do you mean to tell me,” he said slowly, circling to face T’Mollek, “that you weren’t there merely to uncover hidden evidence of Negan’s crimes, but in fact, to _murder him in cold blood_?”

T’Mollek made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “It could have gone either way.”

Her attitude was so casual, and the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. “Was that the big dilemma you were facing before you left for Algalon?” he asked. “To kill or not to kill?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but her nose started bleeding again and she put a hand to her face. Q handed her a handkerchief that had suddenly materialized in a chink in his armor.

“Are you ready to return to the _Enterprise_?” Galan asked her in concern. “Doston and Tenna are already on board, under Dr. Crusher's care.”

T’Mollek ignored him. She had far too many questions to take her leave now. “You’ve been circling Algalon, biding your time until the Tarsen’s disease was eradicated. Yet you brought Tenna on board this ship even though she had symptoms. Why?”

Galan smiled. “Negan had claimed his baby was infected with Tarsen’s. And I knew his baby to be of Vulcan descent, despite her clipped ears.”

“You knew Tarsen’s was never in play. You kept the truth from Mirek all this time,” she said. “What did you intend to do tomorrow when she came for us?”

“I knew Negan would never let us take the children alive,” he said, “just as I knew he must be artificially keeping the children feverish and ill in order to stave us off. I was planning to shuttle down, incapacitate my crew, and allow the craft to be commandeered by Negan.”

“So all I had to do was bide my time,” T’Mollek said faintly. “Negan would still be alive and all of us would be on our way to Betagon.”

“And Mirek would also still be alive and continuing her pursuit of you,” Galan reminded her. “There was no guarantee you would have survived the journey.”

“You wanted Negan to survive?”

“This was never about vengeance, T’Mollek,” he said softly. “T’Sharr wanted to stop him from building a following toward Reunification. That was her real reason for wanting him dead. I, on the other hand, was an admirer. Vengeance was an excuse she created to convince you to help her.”

“So rather than a blood vengeance, T’Sharr raised me to be a political assassin?” she said in wonder. “I would have been executed without a trial.”

“There would have been a nominal trial,” Galan said dismissively with a half-shrug. “Your life was never of any concern to T’Sharr.”

“My death was part of her plan all along,” T’Mollek said, not really shocked by this news. “How did you know I wouldn’t follow through with the assassination?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “But I hoped you had the same forgiving and loving heart of your foremothers.”

She looked down at the bloody handkerchief in her hand. She did forgive and even love Negan. And she missed him. She wished she had a way to tell him this. In a sense, she did have.

“I’m ready to return to the _Enterprise_ ,” she said, rising from the commander’s chair. “You’re coming with us?”

Galan smiled sadly. “No. I will remain here.”

“Please,” she said. “Return to the starbase with me. I still have so many questions.”

“Your aunt can answer them all.”

“I have no wish to ever speak with my aunt,” T’Mollek said defiantly. “She is a war criminal.”

“Then you can speak with your grandfather.”

T’Mollek scoffed. “He’s deep underground. I have no way to reach him.”

In a loud stage whisper, Q asked, “Are you forgetting whom you’re sleeping with?”

She ignored him and addressed Galan. “You owe me. You tried to shoot me out of the sky.”

He was gently dismissive. “I merely clipped your wing.”

“Boy, the apple doesn’t far fall, does it?” Q said. “‘I clipped your wing.’ ‘I gave her a mild emetic.’”

“Please come with me, Galan. Captain Picard will ask for leniency from Starfleet.”

“They would never accept me.”

“They will. You’ll prove yourself to them and their prejudice will disappear.”

“Because that’s gone so well for _you_ . . . .” Q told her, sotto voce.

T’Mollek hit him in the chest plate with the back of her hand, then asked him, “Can’t you . . . _make_ them accept him?”

Q raised eyebrows in genuine surprise. “You want me to use my powers to create tolerance? Doesn’t work that way.”

She stepped toward Galan, making her final plea. “Come with me. We can face our past together. I need someone at my side who understands me. Who can speak in my defense at my court-martial.”

“You can do this on your own,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders lovingly. “My presence would only hurt you. You and I both know what I must do.”

T’Mollek looked into Galan’s eyes, but he remained steadfast.

“Uh, much as I've enjoyed my little visit to Bloodbath and Beyond,” Q said, eyeing Mirek’s bloody eye socket, “I’d say it's time to go.”

“I don’t agree with your decision to stay, Galan” T’Mollek said decisively, “but I see that you are not to be dissuaded.” She gave him an awkward hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Grandfather.”

Galan smiled and kissed the top of her head. “Farewell, my Ceanna.”

Galan opened the communication frequency with the _Enterprise_. Captain Picard’s image appeared on the view screen. “This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_. What the hell is going on?”

“Captain,” he greeted him cordially. “My name is Galan Tomalak of the Romulan patrol ship Toxis. Please lock coordinates on Dr. O'Reilly and Q and prepare to beam them aboard.” After a slight pause, he added, “Go easy on her.” The screen went black.

Galan shook Q’s hand, whispering, “Be good to her.”

“I fully intend to, sir.”

Q and T’Mollek dematerialized—it was quite an unnecessary use of resources given Q’s powers, but it was good protocol after she had stolen a shuttlecraft that was about to go down with the self-destructing Romulan scout ship and its sole survivor.


	3. Post-Show 2: Back to the Enterprise

Q and T’Mollek materialized on the transporter pad.

“Uh. Welcome back, Doctor,” Transporter Chief Miles O’Brien said haltingly when he saw her demolished face.

“Thank you, Chief,” she replied, stepped down from the pad.

He stepped forward awkwardly. “Uh. I’m sorry, but . . . the Captain . . . .”

“. . . asked you to detain me until Security arrives?” she finished for him.

“That’s right,” he smiled.

“Understood.” She stood at attention, hands clasped behind her back, waiting for the security escort to arrive.

Worf barged into the room with three guards. A bit of overkill, even for the Klingon, but he seemed to be making a point.

“Dr. O’Reilly,” he intoned darkly. “You will accompany us to the Captain’s ready room to explain yourself.”

“Of course,” she agreed and followed him out, the guards falling in behind and around them.

The escort traveled quickly through the corridor to the bridge.

“So _that_ happened,” Q said, striding next to her, handing her an ice pack that he had conjured from pure energy.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, looking straight ahead, holding the ice pack to her face.

“I was _right_ about the murders!” he gloated.

T’Mollek was affronted and cast a worried and guilty look at Worf. “Q,” she hissed, “this isn’t the time or place . . .”

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us,” he said in a normal voice. “So . . . your aunt didn’t just want you to gather evidence of Negan’s past crimes. She was grooming her outcast little loser of a mongrel niece to be an assassin. Only to disavow her when the deed was done, obviously. _'If you can't get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance_.’”

He was trying to provoke a reaction, but T’Mollek remained silent.

He slipped back into his sarcastic, mocking tone. “No wonder you were so conflicted. Betray your aunt or betray your sense of morality. Your duty to Starfleet. Your beloved captain. Whatever will she say when she learns that twenty-five years of careful and meticulous planning has been laid to waste?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, still quietly out of reflex and through clenched teeth. “I won’t be there to hear it. She is dead to me.”

“I suspect she feels the same about you,” he said flippantly. “After all, you’ve spent the better part of your life pretending to be bad at being a Vulcan by pretending to try to be good at being a Vulcan but failing, when all along you were _great_ at being a Vulcan so you could betray your aunt.” He thrust a finger into the air thoughtfully. “But _not_ good enough that you could save the man you really love. The one who fathered your half-sister and was involved in the plot to kill your parents.”

T’Mollek set her jaw and kept walking.

“Does she know what you can do with your mind?” Q asked, widening his eyes exaggeratedly. “Did you give her the ‘suggestion’ that she believe you were barely competent to carry on her orders? Were you surprised when you found that you actually weren’t? What good are you to her? What good are you to anyone?”

T’Mollek abruptly stopped walking and turned to face Q. The security contingent froze in time as T’Mollek and Q spoke.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she demanded loudly, nearly shouting. “Why must you constantly torment me?”

Q turned to face her, toe to toe. He put his face down into hers and spoke very quickly as though quizzing her before she faced the firing squad, “’ _There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.’_ What is your heart’s desire, T’Mollek? Quick. No thinking.”

T’Mollek opened her mouth, slightly taken aback. “I . . . have lived my entire life to serve my aunt’s desire. Perhaps mine is to know what my heart’s desire _is_.”

Q countered with yet another George Bernard Shaw quote: “‘ _Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.’_ You have full control over what happens next, my dear.” He patted her gently on the cheek. “Make good choices.”

He vanished and the security crew continued walking without missing a beat. They passed by T’Mollek, who was still standing to the side, facing the empty space that Q had just filled a moment ago. They stopped as they realized she was standing behind them. A guard sternly indicated that she should get back into the group, and she did.

They reached the bridge and turned immediately to the right, into the Captain’s ready room. Inside, Picard nodded and Worf and his guards retreated.

***

“I’ve listened to your recorded confession,” Picard said slowly and softly. “You wanted to be caught.”

“I committed murder on Nimbus III,” she said stoically, her ice pack on the desk in front of her. “I conspired to commit an assassination. I should be convicted of my crimes.”

“But the killing on Nimbus III was justifiable,” he said placatingly. “You were a child, you had just experienced unthinkable trauma. Nearly dying in a bombing. Witnessing your mother’s brutal murder. And the boy _was_ guilty in his involvement in the bombing, even though he tried to make things right. The mistake is understandable.”

“He was a child,” she said bitterly. “He was trying to save us all. He deserves retribution. His family deserves retribution.”

“His mother is dead,” Picard reminded her.

“But her sister is still alive. My grandfather knows how to contact her. I need to get word to her. I need to confess my crime—all of my crimes—and suffer the consequences. I know that it will bring dishonor upon my family and to Starfleet . . . to you. But it must be done. I must take full responsibility for my actions.”

“T’Mollek, you’ve committed no crimes,” Picard said, a little wide-eyed and enthusiastic. “If you confess to these . . . errors in judgement, you’ll only waste a lot of time and resources before you’re fully exonerated. In fact, you’ve proven yourself a valuable asset, and you will receive a commendation for your bravery on Algalon and on the Romulan ship.”

“Captain Picard, with all due respect,” she began miserably, “you are not thinking clearly.”

She gazed deeply into his eyes. “Think about what I’ve done. I am responsible for the deaths of my entire crew. I took this mission under false pretenses. I planned to assassinate the president of a Federation penal colony—at best, I would have planted evidence to falsely implicate him in the murder of Mirek’s son and of my mother. I disabled Commander Data. I went rogue, stole a shuttlecraft, and killed several Romulan military personnel, including a commander, without orders. Would you say this to any other crew member?”

Picard faltered slightly. “I . . . don’t know.”

“T’Sharr is very . . . persuasive,” she said. “It’s a form of mind control, and she is quite adept. She convinced you that I was to be trusted. Fully trusted. That I was courageous and worthy of commendation. She . . . manipulated your mind to trust me. Captain, I am not—I _was_ not—to be trusted. Do you understand me now?”

The captain blinked and shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I . . . believe so.” He took a deep breath and saw the situation clearly now. Now he addressed her far more sternly.

“Dr. O’Reilly, while I do feel that you deserved the commendations I gave you for the performance of your duties on Syroda and the Blotork ship, I will have to give your more recent actions . . . additional consideration—” He paused and looked at her, perplexed. “Are you weeping?”

“Yes, sir,” she said and looked down at her hands.

Somewhat flummoxed and discomfited by this display of emotion, he asked, “Why?”

She looked at him with utter sincerity, perhaps for the first time. “Because I betrayed everything I am. I betrayed the Federation. I betrayed a Starfleet captain. And more—I betrayed _you_. I am not fit to wear this uniform.” She removed her Starfleet insignia communication badge and placed it on his desk.

Picard softened somewhat. “T’Mollek. I appreciate your . . . remorse. But I suspect that you were not doing all of this of your own volition.”

She looked up at him with a slight frown.

“You say your aunt has the ability to . . . convince people to do her will?”

“Yes,” she said, not quite admitting that she shared that skill.

“This ability has given her an advantage in her work as an ambassador,” he said. “It’s also helped her nearly perpetrate a murder.” His voice softened even more. “T’Mollek . . . you have been under your aunt’s mental control since you were a child. She has groomed you for twenty-five years to carry out this crime. But your mental self-control was too strong for her influence.” He smiled. “You are your own person. Do _you_ understand?”

Relief, respect, appreciation, and possibly love swept over T’Mollek like a warm ocean breeze. “Yes, sir.”

“I think once you return to active duty following your medical leave, you’ll need to spend some time with Counselor Troi to begin processing this new . . . you.”

“With all respect, sir, I don’t think I’ll be going back to active duty,” she said firmly. “I will be turning myself over to the authorities. I would, however, suggest that you spend some time with Counselor Troi to process your genuine and unbiased feelings toward me and my actions so that you can testify appropriately at my court-martial. Now that you see things as they are.”

“Yes, I think that would be wise,” he agreed. “Nevertheless, T’Mollek, I can’t help but feel that my trust in you has been justified. You remind me of a certain Bajoran lieutenant who once served on board the _Enterprise_. She’d been court-martialed for disobeying a direct order, which resulted in the deaths of eight of her fellow crewmembers. She was later released and reinstated to Starfleet, where she proved an extremely valuable member of my crew.”

“Where is she now?”

Picard grew suddenly embarrassed. “She, er, defected. To the Maquis. But that’s beside the point. You, Doctor O’Reilly, are a valuable member of this crew. You saved those children. You solved the mystery of their poisoning. You fought against two and a half decades of mind control and ultimately, you spared Negan’s life. You risked your own to save the captives aboard the Romulan ship. You are capable of being so much more than a weapon to serve someone else’s purpose. And I say that with a clear head and open eyes. Anyone could see that. Even Commander Riker.”

She looked down again and chuckled lightly. “Thank you, sir.”

“And while I'm being avuncular,” he said, changing the subject entirely, “what are we going to do about this Q situation?”

“My relationship with him is . . .”

“Complicated,” he finished for her.

“Indeed.”

“He went AWOL following the situation on the Blotorkian ship,” Picard said. “His status as a Starfleet officer is in question. However, he seems to think he has earned a right to a place on this ship. But I’m concerned that his presence could prove to be . . .”

“A constant distraction and source of mischief.”

“Precisely.”

She sighed. “I doubt he'll be around much longer. I think I was just a project to him, and now that it's complete, he will be on his way.”

“Don't be so sure,” he said. “I've seen that look before. I think you mean more to him than _either_ of you realizes.”

“I’m not sure it matters,” she said. “Depending on the results of the inquiry, I am certain to be court-martialed. And if I’m extradited to Romulus to answer for the murder of Mirek’s son . . .”

“I won’t let that happen,” he said solidly.

“Well, if not,” she said ironically, “I could always defect . . .”

“To the Maquis?” he said with a smile. She was silent and he said in quiet realization. “To the Q continuum.”

“It has been . . . suggested,” she said. “Although not in so many words.”

“Have you given it any serious thought?” he asked.

“I tried to put Q out of my mind while I was on Algalon. But he was always in my thoughts. And when he returned to me . . .” Her voice trailed off, not knowing how to express her feelings in words.

“It was as though your life suddenly had meaning again,” he said in complete understanding.

“I was a hyper-sensitive, highly spirited child. Severe trauma and twenty-five years of emotion suppression and mental manipulation dulled me. When I met Q, the floodgates were opened and every feeling I’d ever suppressed came back to me. It was too much, and I shut down again. But I wasn’t . . . content. Now that I know what I’ve been missing, I don’t know that I can go back. But I don’t know if I can face . . . what I now am. Whatever that is.”

“Change can be difficult,” he allowed. “Even frightening. But it can also be the best thing for us.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me I should become Q?”

He smiled. “You know better than that. Only you can make your own way. But don’t make your decision too hastily.”

“Yes, sir,” she smiled. “Of course.”

“Now then,” he said, changing the subject. “Have you decided where you want to spend the next few weeks recuperating? We will be passing by Starbase 11.”

“If I can arrange it, I would like to travel to Earth,” she said, a bit embarrassed. “I haven’t visited my parents’ graves in . . . well, in far too long.”

“I see,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Earth is months away. I take it you won’t be traveling in the . . . conventional manner?”

“I may have a ride,” she said with a half-smile.

Picard returned her smile. “Well, then. Go see Dr. Crusher about those wounds. Then recuperate on Earth with your family. Come back and discuss things with Counselor Troi. We’ll deal with the court martial—” he shot her a light grin, “and your possible defection—when the time comes.”

He stood up and she followed suit. They shook hands, and he handed her the ice pack.

“Thank you, sir,” she said gratefully. “For everything.”


	4. Forgiveness

T’Mollek held the ice pack to her face and headed back to her quarters to shower and change into a newly replicated uniform. It smelled amazing: sterile, clean, untouched by animal manure. But something was on her mind and she wouldn’t be able to relax until she got something off her chest. She made a detour for the holodeck.

“Computer,” she ordered once she was inside. “Specter Program One.”

And there he was, standing before her, as large as life. Sexily masked, brandishing a knife, ready to attack.

“No knife,” T’Mollek said. The knife disappeared. She slowly approached Specter. She reached up and removed the mask from his face.

He didn’t have a face.

 _Of course_ , she thought. _The computer doesn’t know who you are_. “Computer, can you replicate the home of Jaxon Traegar on Algalon? Specifically, the living room.”

The room appeared all around her. The images had been captured during the investigation and the room looked exactly as it had when she had last seen it. She walked over to the couch and picked up Dr. Nameless, Elgie’s tiny doll.

“Computer, replace Specter with Jaxon Traegar.”

“Please specify parameters,” the computer requested.

_Dammit._

“Computer, replace Specter with Negan.”

The faceless luchador phased out of being and was replaced by the twenty-five-year-old Negan. Even more brash and rakish than the man she had come to know, even in their mind meld flashback, this Negan had a beardless baby face and only the beginnings of the haunted expression she had grown familiar with. This was Negan, galaxy-class athlete and criminal politician. The whistle-blower who had admitted to conspiring to spread a Vulcan plague in exchange for leniency.

This was the man her mother had seduced in the throes of pon farr.

“Well, hello, doll!” the young Negan drawled, his voice as smooth as his cheeks and slightly higher in pitch than she had expected. He was based on recordings of the celebrity, not a reminiscence of a middle-aged man.  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He stepped toward her with self-conscious swagger and an overblown seductive persona.

“How do you do?” T’Mollek said with stiff politeness.

He grinned. “A fuck of a lot better _now_ , that’s for fuckin’ sure.”

“So I see the swearing isn’t new for you,” she said.

“What?” he laughed in confusion.

“Just be a person,” she admonished the image.

He put his hands up and grinned in mock surrender and took a step back. Without the beard, his dimples practically popped out of his cheeks and hit her in the eyes.

He regarded her face. “Did I do that, darlin’?” he asked, his voice suddenly gentle. He reached toward her and gently placed this thumb under her bruised eye.

She reached forward as well and touched his face, ran her fingers through his thick hair. He closed his eyes and smiled in contentment. She touched his hairline, his temple, his cheek, his chin. He sighed. Her eyes welled with tears. Her thumb lightly brushed his lower lip. He opened his eyes and leaned in to her, his lips parted.

She watched him drawing near and she whispered, “I forgive you.”

His lips lightly touched hers and she gasped. “Computer!”

The image of Negan froze in mid-kiss, awaiting her order. She gazed into his sweet, puppy dog eyes.

“Delete program.”

He vanished along with the living room she had spent so many hours in, leaving her all alone in the empty holodeck grid. Her head pounded. She allowed one tear to roll from her good eye—no more.

“I knew you were in love with him . . .” Q muttered bitterly.

T’Mollek didn’t startle easily, but she nearly jumped out of her skin. Then in embarrassment, betrayal, and scarlet fury, she shouted, “Q!”

How long had he been watching her most private moments? She lashed out at him, beating his chest with her fists. He gently but firmly took her wrists in his hands. He was now fully Q, and as such, he had all the strength of the universe. He easily subdued her. It was the first time in her adult life that she had been physically overpowered, and it both frightened and infuriated her. It was also strangely primal and it left her with unusual feelings.

“There, there . . .” he said through gritted teeth, as though making an effort to stop her. Finally, exhausted and beaten, she relaxed and he took her into his arms.

She rested her cheek against his chest wearily. “This is a gross invasion of my—”

“Privacy, I know . . . I know,” he said. “But I had to know how much you _really_ loved Negan.”

“You know nothing about my—”

“Look,” he stopped her. “You loved him a little. It’s OK. It happens.”

“It doesn’t matter what I felt for him,” she said. “He’s dead.”

“Yes, he’s gone,” he said flippantly. “But not dead.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s not dead,” he said again.

“You brought him back to life?” she said in disbelief.

“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t be standing here right now if I’d done that.”

“I saw him die,” she contested. “The disrupter . . .”

“Didn’t even touch him,” he said with a slight glint of smugness in his eye.

“But he was . . .”

Q made a vague gesture with his hand. “Disapparated.”

“You disapparated him?”

“Not I!” he said defensively. “You!”

“I what?”

“You disapparated him!” he repeated.  
  
“I did no such thing!”

He rolled his eyes again. She wasn’t getting it. “Never mind. He’s gone. He didn’t die. End of story.”

“ _Not_ end of story,” she said, feeling riled up. “Where is he?”

“He’s . . . elsewhere,” Q said evasively.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Would the entity never learn? “Q. Did you beam him into the walls of a cave?”

“No,” he said, “but funny you should bring that up! I also heeded your admonition about Antius Bandeen. I . . . relocated him as well.”

“Relocated him . . . _where_?” she asked, quickly losing her patience.

“Well, you know how this is a ‘universe.’ And it has ‘planets,’ and ‘galaxies,’ and you know how there are _alternate_ universes and realities—a multiverse—existing simultaneously with this uni—” He was stalling.

“Q, WHERE ARE NEGAN AND ANTIUS BANDEEN??” she demanded.

“I sent them both to an alternate universe Earth during the early twenty-first century.”

She blinked, confused. “Why?”

“It’s an experiment,” he explained. “Their mindsets were really more in tuned to that backward era. Bandeen with his devil-may-care medical experiments—who knows what he might come up with. And Negan with his natural charisma and ability to convince and lead the masses by whatever means necessary.”

“How did you know to disapparate Negan?”

“Hm?” he asked as though he hadn’t heard her.

“You weren’t even on the Romulan ship. How did you know he was being killed?”

She picked up on everything. Q fumbled for an answer. “Uhrrr, well, uh, you . . . asked me to?”

“Q, you were the last thing on my mind at that moment.”

That was hurtful. “That might well be, but . . . you . . .” He made a disgusted face and threw up his hands. “Well, for lack of a better word, you prayed for him.”

“I prayed for you to disapparate him,” she said blankly.

“Well, not in so many words,” he said.

She stood there for quite a few moments, just staring blankly at him. Finally she opened her mouth. “I did no such thing.”

“Oh, you did, too. I could hear you all the way to the _Enterprise_ ,” he said. His voice rose in an almost, but not quite, mocking tone. “‘ _Please_!’ I told you we have a connection. I knew you needed my help, and . . . so I helped.” He shrugged.

She finally accepted this. “Please” did sound like something she might have thought at that moment.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely.

“You’re welcome.”

“You do realize,” she added dryly, “that Negan was sentenced to Algalon as a result of his association with Antius Bandeen, right?”

“Reeeally!” Q exclaimed, not seeming particularly surprised. “Small world, i’n’it?”


	5. Family

Q accompanied T’Mollek to sickbay where Dr. Crusher once again tended to her injuries.

“You know you don’t get a discount for repeat visits,” Dr. Crusher said with a cheeky twist of her mouth.

T’Mollek returned the smile. “I do not intend to continue this trend, Doctor.”

Crusher’s face turned serious. “Deanna stopped by earlier. She’d like to speak with you.”

“I appreciate that,” T’Mollek replied, her smile disappearing. “However, I would like some time to process things on my own.”

“I’m not sure that’s what she wants to talk to you about.”  
  
“Oh?”

She looked up as Deanna walked into the examination room.

“Welcome back, T’Mollek,” Troi said with a warm smile.

“Thank you, Deanna.”

Dr. Crusher stepped out to let the women talk. She gave Q a meaningful look at the door, beckoning him with a tilt of her head, but he ignored her and remained by T’Mollek’s side. Crusher sighed and left.

“I heard that you were considering spending your recovery time on Earth,” Deanna said.

“It was just a thought,” T’Mollek said, a little embarrassed. She hadn’t even mentioned this to Q yet. “If I can manage to find transport.”

“Consider it done,” Q said. She nodded in thanks and blushed.

“Where were you planning to stay?” Deanna asked pointedly yet gently.

“I hadn’t given it that much thought,” she answered vaguely. She hadn’t said she hadn’t given it _any_ thought.

“When was the last time you saw your paternal grandparents?”

“Not since my parents’ funerals,” T’Mollek said.

“I see,” Deanna replied, as if she thought T’Mollek couldn’t see through this obvious admonition.

“I have nothing to say to them, Counselor,” she said, suddenly formal with her friend. “They abandoned me when I was a child and they haven’t made any attempt to contact me in over twenty years.”

“Have you attempted to contact them?” she asked implacably.

“No,” T’Mollek admitted.

“Well, then,” the counselor said. “Perhaps now is the time to leave the past behind you and concentrate on what’s really important. Family.”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” she prodded.

“Very well,” T’Mollek relented. “I will contact them at my earliest opportunity.” She left the promise vague, knowing she would have to keep it. Her sense of truthfulness would allow for nothing less.

“Excellent,” Troi said a bit slyly. “When your grandparents heard about what you’d done to save the Earth, they were incredibly proud. They’re actually on Starbase 11 now—within communication range. You can actually contact them now to make arrangements.”

Deanna and Q exchanged looks. He was impressed with how deftly Troi had outwitted T’Mollek. He didn’t realize she had such a capacity for chicanery.

T’Mollek gave her friends an annoyed but acquiescing look. “There is more than one trickster in this room,” she said shaking her head.

***

Deanna and Q left T’Mollek alone in the examination room, where she sat at a desk in front of a monitor, speaking with Henry and Ruth O’Reilly, her late father’s parents. The conversation began stiffly and haltingly. They exchanged polite words and then fell into a painful silence.

Finally, T’Mollek said, “Well, it was quite pleasant speaking with you. Peace and long life.” She raised her hands in the formal Vulcan salute, something she hadn’t actually done in many years. It felt strange and foreign to her—but no more so than the preceding conversation had been.

“Please don’t go yet,” Ruth begged, her desperation finally showing. “We want you to stay with us on Earth for a little while. On the farm. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in over twenty years. We miss you so much.”

T’Mollek cocked her head curiously. “What do you miss?” she asked, a little bitingly. “My outbursts? My promiscuity? My inveterate incorrigibility? I believe those were the words you used.”

“The words we . . .?” Ruth said in confusion. “I don’t even know what half those words mean.”

“We didn’t blame you for your post-traumatic stress, T’Mollek,” Henry said reasonably. “We tried to help you come to terms with everything after your parents’ deaths.”

“By giving up on me? By disposing of me?”

“You were completely traumatized when you returned from Nimbus III,” Ruth said. “You were completely shut down for months. You lay in bed staring at the walls all day. And all night you just . . . sobbed.”

“She didn’t sob,” Henry corrected her. “She _keened_. It was like listening to a dying animal for hours on end.”

“It was awful,” Ruth agreed with tears in her eyes at the memory.

“I see,” T’Mollek said in mock understanding. “It makes sense why you abandoned me. I was too annoying to listen to at night.” All the old pain from her early adolescence was flooding her and she was becoming as petulant, stubborn, sarcastic, and unreasonable as she had been as a child.

“Oh, sweet girl, we would have listened to your keening twenty-four hours a day if we thought it was best for you,” Ruth said. “But it just wasn’t. It couldn’t be. You weren’t eating, weren’t sleeping. We tried to get you help. Medication. Therapy. Nothing helped.”

“So you passed me off to a stranger,” T’Mollek said.

“We sent you to live with your aunt,” Ruth countered placatingly. “She is your family. She had the means to help you.”

“You banished me to an alien planet during the most difficult time of my life,” T’Mollek said, her voice rising and tightening. “I wasn’t prepared for the lifestyle, for the culture, for the . . .  _climate_.” She was grasping at every possible straw to blame her grandparents on.

“Your parents had taken you all over the galaxy,” Henry said firmly. “We didn’t think it would be that much of a shock.”

“I’d been with my parents,” she reminded them. “I had them for stability. For comfort. For love. On Vulcan, there was no companionship, no love. I had no friends. I was completely alone.”

“Your aunt said Vulcans didn’t need friends,” Ruth said helplessly. She realized as she said it how silly and wrong it sounded now.

“Everyone needs friends!” T’Mollek exploded. “Even Vulcans! But I was raised as a human.” She poked herself painfully in the breastbone with her forefinger. “I needed patience and understanding, not abandonment. How could you not know that?”

“T’Sharr told us it was what was best for you,” Ruth said in a tiny voice.

“And you believed her?!”

Ruth tried to find the right words to explain what at the time had seemed so obvious but now seemed so ridiculous and wrong. “Your aunt T’Sharr was very . . .”

And just like that, T’Mollek understood: absolutely everything she had believed about these people for the past twenty-odd years was completely wrong.

“Persuasive,” she quietly finished for her grandma.

“We went against every single instinct in our bodies,” Ruth pleaded tearfully, “but our only wish was to do the right thing for you. We were devastated when she took you away. Devastated. You didn’t even look back at us. You didn’t say goodbye. We thought she must be right. You had no love for us. You were so eager to go, to leave us.”

T’Mollek’s voice caught. “I believe that she . . . persuaded me as well.”

Ruth broke down crying. Henry, also crying, put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “T’Mollek,” he said gruffly, “I know she’s your great-aunt and all, but . . . I don’t think she’s a very nice woman.”

T’Mollek let down her guard and laughed, tears in her eyes as well. “No,” she agreed wholeheartedly. “I don’t think she is, either.”

T’Mollek agreed to stay with them on Earth while she recovered.

“But how much time do you have off-duty?” Ruth asked worriedly. “It took us months to get to the starbase.”

“Don’t worry,” T’Mollek said. “I have the means to get us all back to Earth in no time at all.”

She suddenly remembered something—something quite important.

“Oh, and . . . if it’s all right with you, I’ll be bringing someone with me. . . .”


	6. I Only Have Eyes for Q

It was a cool November afternoon. T’Mollek lay on the porch swing at her grandparents' farm in central Illinois. She wore a thick, warm sweater with the sleeves pushed up. Her arms were bandaged and she had a few small scars on her face. Her eyelid was colorful but no longer swollen. Elgie was playing with Dr. Nameless on the porch floor next to her. Henry O’Reilly was in the barn tinkering with a broken down 22nd century tractor he’d inherited. Ruth was sitting on a chair, snapping string beans. The scent of roasting turkey, gravy, potatoes, carrots, squash, and chickpeas filled the air.

“Let me snap some of those beans, Grandma,” T’Mollek said, sitting up on the porch swing.

“No,” Ruth said firmly. “You're not allowed to do any work for another week. Just rest and relax.”

T’Mollek lay back with a frustrated sigh. “Very well.”

Her eyes wandered toward the sidewalk, and the smile drained from her face. “Guess who's coming to Thanksgiving dinner,” she said wearily.

Q came strolling up the walk. He was wearing overalls and a plaid shirt, his hands casually in his pockets. He saw the family looking at him, and he smiled and waved cheerily. He skipped jauntily up the porch and handed Ruth a huge bouquet of flowers that hadn’t been in his hands a moment ago. The flowers glowed and sang when she took them.

Ruth blushed and chuckled girlishly. “Oh, Q . . .” she said, setting down her colander of beans and taking the flowers inside the house.

Q gave T’Mollek a casual peck on the cheek, then turned his attention to Elgie. He plopped down onto the porch and produced his own doll, this one wearing a maroon Starfleet’s uniform with tiny admiral’s pips. They played together, performing imaginary experiments and testing hypotheses.

Henry came out the barn and, seeing Q, asked him if he could help him take a look at something. Q handed Admiral Nameless to Elgie and patted her on the head with the promise to be right back. He followed Henry into the barn, a laconic swagger in his step.

“Don't get too used to Q being around, Elgie,” T’Mollek warned. “He won't be here for long. He'll be moving on soon, once the novelty wears off.”

“But you love each other,” Elgie countered. “Aren't you dunna get married?”

T’Mollek was shocked. Where had that come from? “Elgie, why would you–? What do you know about love and marriage?”

“Grandma and Grandpa said you two are in love and are dunna get married.”

As she was saying that, Ruth was coming back out, carrying her flowers in a vase. She gave Elgie an admonishing look. “I'm not sure we said that, exactly,” she told T’Mollek, “but he certainly is courtin' you pretty hard.”

“He is play acting,” T’Mollek promised. “As soon as he is bored or things become inconvenient, he will vanish.”

The sound of whooping and a loud engine noise interrupted them. Henry was tearing out of the barn on a brand-new, shiny red 22nd century tractor. Q followed. He folded his arms and leaned against the side of the barn door, smiling and nodding in a posturing show of satisfaction.

Elgie ran out to the yard to see. She stopped running when she reached a large maple tree. She crouched down.

“Oh, no!” she cried. “The robin egg breaked!” She began to weep.

Q, hearing this, dashed over and picked up the broken egg and the featherless bird fetus. “Oh, no!” he cooed sympathetically.

T’Mollek walked over as well, in an attempt to comfort the child _and_ teach her a valuable lesson about science. “There is a certain natural attrition that prevents overpopulation of a species,” she told her. “If every egg lain on Earth hatched, the planet would soon be plagued by an overwhelming variety of avian species.”

Elgie and Q stared at her for a long moment.

“Can't you just say ‘birds’?” Q asked finally.

She lifted an eyebrow implacably. “I can.”

“Look, Elgie!” Q said breathlessly. A healthy, fully-feathered baby bird emerged from the shattered egg. He handed the bird to Elgie, whose face lit up with joy.

“Q,” T’Mollek chided. “I thought you weren't supposed to do that.”

“Oh, please,” he said as Elgie ran off with the chirping bird in her hands. “It's just an 'avian species.’”  

“Really. This needs to stop.”

“But I like giving your family presents.”

“What exactly do you hope to accomplish by ingratiating yourself with my family?” she asked him.

“Something good, I hope.”

She looked back at her grandparents who were standing together in front of the cherry-red tractor, watching her and Q. Caught, they turned abruptly in opposite directions and awkwardly pretended to polish or inspect the tractor.

“Enough is enough,” T’Mollek hissed. “We need to talk.”

Taking the hint, Ruth said, “Elgie, Hank, come help me with these, uh, beans, wouldja?” She walked up to the porch and the others followed.

“Can I have some milk?” Elgie asked.

“Of course,” Ruth said.

“Chocolate?” she asked sweetly.

“No,” Ruth, who had learned her lesson about feeding a Vulcan child chocolate the hard way. “White milk for you.”

Disappointed, Elgie muttered as the door closed, “White isn’t my color . . .”

Q and T’Mollek walked up the porch together and sat on the porch swing.

“How much longer can you sustain this lifestyle?” T’Mollek asked Q, who now had a wheat stem in his mouth to complete the “farmer” affect.

“Not much!” Q said earnestly, removing the wheat. “Seriously, how can _you_?”

“It has not been easy,” she confessed. “I was practically begging my grandmother to allow me to snap string beans several minutes ago.”

“It's inhuman!”

“It's only for another week,” she said. “Then I’ll be back on the _Enterprise_.”

“I won't make it,” Q complained.

She regarded him. “In a lifetime of a billion years, I would think that a week would be a mere fraction of a breath to you.”

“Don't presume to understand me and my concept of time,” he rebuked her.

“Why _are_ you still here, if it's so interminable to you?” she asked curiously.

He looked at her sincerely. “Don't be mad, but . . . I think I . . .” He couldn’t say the word, so he said instead, “Well, I’ve grown accustomed to your face.”

She stared at him as if uncomprehending.

“Oh, you know what I’m trying to say,” he said in frustration. Then he said in a reluctant and chagrined whisper, through gritted teeth, “I’ve fallen in love with you?”

T’Mollek scoffed with a loud and surprised, “Hah!”

“Don't sound so disgusted,” Q groused. “I didn't do it intentionally. You wanted me to prove what I felt wasn't just physical. I spent so much time with you these past two weeks. We shared meals. We went on dates. I took you to see _Phantom of the Opera_ , for heaven's sake!”

“That was terrible, wasn't it?” she said, shuddering at the memory.

“It was the worst,” he concurred. “But I actually enjoyed myself, because I was with you. That's what clinched it for me. If I could sit through three hours of bad Andrew Lloyd Webber and not want to stab my ears with a Klingon mevak, then it must be . . . ‘love.’”

T’Mollek sat silently.

“Well,” he said expectantly. “Say something!” He raised his voice dramatically. “Say you love me!”

With a flourish, he flung his arms in front of him and he was wearing a white mask and a black tuxedo and cape. “Sing to me, my angel of music!” he bellowed grandly.

T’Mollek was wearing a long white gown and her curly auburn hair was long again and pulled back at the sides.

“Why can’t you just be normal?”

“You wouldn’t like me normal,” he stated conversationally.

“That’s not true,” she said mildly. “I loved you just as much when you were human as I . . .” Her voice trailed off guiltily. She was caught.

“As you do now?” Q said quietly, his head tilted toward her, grinning coyly.

“Unfair,” she said. “You caught me at a vulnerable moment.”

“Ah, the power of The Lord Lloyd-Webber,” he said, bowing theatrically.

T’Mollek sighed loudly.

“Sorry,” Q said sweetly. “Trouble breathing in that corset?” He snapped his fingers and they were dressed as they were. “Well. This is an unexpected turn of events, I must say. So now what do we do?”

“We do the only thing we can,” she said bravely. “We see it through to its logical conclusion.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“We get married,” she said with a grim resoluteness she hadn’t felt since she disabled Data in his tent.

“Ugh!” Q turned away in disgust and began pacing the porch.

“I know. I never should have let you into my bed that night on Algalon.” She shook her head in remorse.

Q stopped pacing and turned toward her seriously. “This could be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m not sure how well my mate will take the news.”

T’Mollek remained silent for several moments. “Oh. Well. I did not see _that_ coming,” she said, seemingly nonplussed.

He waved it off with a flicker of his hand. “Ehh, don't worry about it. We're not legally or . . . spiritually bound. We’re technically separated. We do share some common ground, however: she thinks I'm a terrible father; I think she’s a terrible beast.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You are married with _children_.”

“No, no, no, it’s nothing like that!” he said reassuringly. “It’s just the one.”

“I do not wish to break up a family,” she said, standing and prepared to dismiss him forever—again.

“It's not a ‘family’ in the conventional humanoid sense,” he tried to explain. “Besides, the Continuum has decided you would be a much better mother to my children.”

She shook her head and furrowed her brow as she attempted to process that. “Uh—the—what?”

“Junior was born to bring morality back to the Continuum,” his exposition began. “We'd had some troubles with a little civil war, long story. But he's so _troubled_. I mean, he's all right—he's spirited . . . and of course he's handsome as the devil—he looks just like me. But I feel like I could do _better_. His mother is not at all maternal. She's cranky, she's impatient, and worst of all, she doesn't ‘get’ me. You, on the other hand, think the multiverse revolves around me.”

T’Mollek rolled her eyes.

“Plus, you're very protective and nurturing of children. Look how well you did with Elgie and . . . little . . . Katniss.”

“Kandeera,” she corrected.

“Right, right. Kandeera. Those girls brought out all sorts of maternal feelings you didn’t even know you had. The Continuum thinks you would be the _perfect_ mother for the future evolution of the Q. You’re caring without being emotional—well, _overly_ emotional. ”

He turned to face her and took her hands in his. “Just imagine it, T'Mollek,” he said with romantic intensity. “You could be the mother of a new race of immortals. Whadya say?”

“Did you just call me by my actual name to prove that you respect me and take me seriously?”

He smiled hopefully. “Did it work?”

“Is that what this has been?” she said, pulling her hands from his and walking away from him. “Have you been _recruiting_ me all this time?”

He sputtered and stammered a denial. “Wha—? N—Ugh—How could y—Well, yes,” he finally admitted defiantly. His voice softened into sincerity. “But my affection for you, though unexpected and initially unintended, is very real. ‘Love’ was an unfortunate by-product of my recruitment efforts.”

“You orchestrated all of this . . . this . . . maternal training,” she said, reflecting back on the past year. “You took the _Enterprise_ off course en route to Algalon so that I would rescue Kandeera. That delayed us long enough that the situation on Algalon had become desperate and the only child left unharmed was . . .”

“Your little sister.”

“You _knew_ she was my sister. You knew that with all the children bedridden by the time we got there, all my focus would be on her.”

“And aren’t you glad it was?” he said, not denying it.

“Those children languished in comas while we were diverted off-course.”

“But they’re fine now!” he said jovially.

She thought of the terror Doston had faced. The ongoing horrors Tenna had experienced. Sweet little Adiv.

“ _Not_ all of them,” she said viciously.

Q didn’t even have the conscience to look down or appear ashamed.

Then she asked, a little more gently, “How did you know Elgie was my sister?”

“Please,” he said. “I’m omniscient. I know everything I want to know.”

“But you didn’t know about my past. My double life.”

“I wanted to keep _some_ mystery in our relationship,” he shrugged. “Cracking the code of your being was half the fun.”

“I suppose I am meant to be flattered by this.”

“Oh, you should be absolutely flattered,” he said fervently. “I mean, nobody wanted to betroth you to their sons on Vulcan, none of your conquests stuck around during your impressionable, pon farr-riddled adolescent years, Negan wouldn’t even take you into his bed—but the most powerful and important race of super-beings in all the multiverse wants you to be the mother of its greatest generation. Shows you what mortals know about anything.”

“Is this what you meant when you said if I wasn’t ready to understand the sacrifices you make, that I wasn’t ready?” she asked, although she already knew the answer. “Are you offering me the power of the Q?”

“In so many words, yes.”

“Would I be able to bring back Kandeera?”

“That’s not really done,” he reminded her. It was really the understatement of the eon.

“What about Riker and the little girl?” she asked. “You offered him the power of the Q and he refused to bring back a little girl from the dead in defiance of your power. What were his consequences?”

“That was a test run. We occasionally dangle a carrot.”

“Bait and switch,” she corrected.

“You might call it that. Suffice it to say, it's not standard operating procedure.”

“So do I get a carrot?”

“You mean a one-off?”

She nodded. “Or a two-or-three-off.”

“Don’t get greedy!” he chastened her. Then he scoffed in annoyance. “Oh, fine! If you agree to spend the rest of eternity as a Q, you can bring one person back to life.” His eyes grew dark. “But if you choose to relinquish your powers, the consequences will be swift and terrible.” It was more of a warning than a threat. He didn’t make up the rules, he just occasionally carried them out.

***

Henry, Ruth, and Elgie were looking out the window, green beans in their hands, straining to hear.

“Is he p’oposing?” Elgie asked.

“I can't tell,” Henry said.

“Did he give her a marry ring?”

“I don't see one,” Ruth said, craning her neck.

“Is she crying?” Elgie asked, her voice rising in gleeful anticipation.

“No,” said Ruth, “she looks . . . .”

“. . . vaguely disgusted,” Henry finished.

“She always looks like that,” Elgie said knowledgeably. “She has bitchy resting face.”

“Elgie!” Ruth scolded.

“Whaaat?” Elgie said defensively. “That's what Q calls it . . . .”

***

“What will your ‘mate’ have to say about this?” T’Mollek asked rationally. “Would I be visited at night by a jealous Mrs. Q?”

“Nahhh,” he dismissed, not altogether convincingly. “The Lady Q was jealous once, before we had Junior. But she's past that. She has a nickname for me: 'Better in Theory.'”

T’Mollek chuckled.

“Did you just . . . _laugh_?” Q asked.

“It's this place!” she said defensively. “I'm not myself here.”

“Yes, you are,” he said truthfully. “You are your _real_ self here. You wouldn’t know that because you’ve been living a lie for the past twenty-five years.”

“So are you saying we should live here after we’re married?” she asked innocently.

“Oh, sweet Celestia, no,” he said quickly. “I'd sooner live on Blotork.”

“And I would sooner 'kill finish myself of death,’” she said straight-faced.

“You're a little bit funny . . . .”

“I know,” she said honestly. “Believe it or not, I was voted Class Clown at the Academy my freshman year.”

“At _Starfleet_ Academy?” he asked. She nodded. “Are you sure that honor wasn't bestowed upon you . . . ironically?”

T’Mollek thought for a moment. “That would seem to make more sense.”

He smiled warmly. “Wouldn't it?”

He took a step toward her, his arms open. She stepped into his arms and they embraced. He took a step back and put his hands on her shoulders. “So. Whaddya say?”

The front door burst open and Elgie ran excitedly out. “I wanna see your marry ring! I wanna see your marry ring!”

“Elgie,” T’Mollek admonished, “I do not have a—”

But Q had already gotten down on one knee and was holding a light teal box in his hand. He opened it and presented a flawless fourteen-millimeter 10-carat blue diamond ring. He looked into T’Mollek’s horrified eyes and asked quietly, “Too much?” She nodded and when he placed it onto her hand, it was a far more respectable single carat, plain diamond on a simple band.

“T'Mollek O'Reilly,” he said formally. “Will you wear my marry ring?”

“Do I have to actually marry you?” she asked dryly.

“That's up to you,” he said.

“I will do both.”

“Yay!” Elgie cheered, running into the two of them, her arms outstretched. “Three-way hug!”

Q and T’Mollek complied.

“Can I be your ring bearier?” Elgie asked wide-eyed.

T’Mollek tucked Elgie's hair behind her ear and put her hand on her sister’s cheek. “You can be whatever you want to be.”

And she kissed her on the top of the head.


	7. I'm Gettin' Married in the Morning

“Since the day of the first wooden vessels,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard was saying, “all ship masters have had one happy privilege: that of uniting two . . .”

He paused to give side eye to Q.

“. . . _people_ in the bonds of matrimony. And so, we are gathered here today with you, Ceanna T’Mollek O’Reilly, and you . . . Q . . .”

Q gave him a sweet smile.

“. . . in the sight of your fellows, friends, and family.”

T’Mollek wore a traditional white gown—as Q had once predicted she would—and her hair—artificially grown long for aesthetic purposes—cascaded down her back in shiny auburn curls. She wore tiny white angelica flowers in her hair. The flowers held multiple symbolic meanings for the couple. They were native to her Irish ancestral homeland, they had medicinal purposes (particularly for the female reproductive cycle), they represented encouragement and inspiration, and dried angelica was traditionally placed into “dream pillows” to promote restfulness.

Q wore his Starfleet dress uniform—and not ironically. He had received an honorary reinstatement just in time for the wedding.

The bride’s attendants were Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher. Elgie served as both flower girl and ring bearer. A blonde man whom no one had ever seen before, served as Q’s groomsman. He wore a dark suit with a straight red necktie, looking for all the world like a 20th century TV lawyer.

The ceremony took place on the O’Reilly farm.

Will Riker, his arms folded, leaned over to Geordi LaForge and whispered, “I heard they've written their own vows.”

“This oughta be interesting,” Geordi grinned wryly.

Q went first. “My dearest, comma, T’Mollek,” he began solemnly, “As you leave this provincial life to become part of my world, I promise never to materialize you or any child under the age of ten—related or otherwise—into a cave, wall, or any other enclosed space. I promise to accept your innumerable contradictions: The highly emotional way you have of refusing to express emotion, your disdain for Vulcan pride, and your prideful way of expressing that disdain. I promise to continue making musical theatre references until you acknowledge that you _get_ them _all_. I promise to love you even when you ultimately decide being Q is too great a responsibility and go back to being your gravity-bound, intellectually limited, immortal self, because—” He widened his eyes and shook his head sarcastically—“they always do. I promise to respect you . . . to hear you . . . to understand you . . . to love you, _mo shíorghrá_ _ **[1]**_, for eternity. Literally. Eternity.”

Picard paused to let that speech settle into place. Then he turned to the bride. “T'Mollek?”

“I promise to be a good mother to your child,” she said, “because apparently that is inevitable.”

Q turned to the crowd and shook his head. “It’s not,” he mouthed.

“I promise to accept your arrogance and to always remember it is to mask your overwhelming insecurity.”

Q turned again and mouthed, “It’s not.”

“I promise to accept my own attraction to your often seemingly destructive sense of mischief and ‘fun’ and to tolerate it even when it is clearly time to be serious, but only when it does not endanger the health, safety, or lives of others.”

Q turned once more, set to contradict her, but then made a gesture of begrudging agreement and turned back to her.

“I promise to always love you, even when it is illogical and even impossible.”

She turned to Picard with a small nod of finality.

“Do you have the rings?” Picard asked, smiling expectantly at Elgie, who was standing behind Beverly.

Elgie looked up at him, her eyes squinched shut in delight, her hand to her mouth, very pleased with herself.

“Elgie?” prompted Picard, who didn’t particularly like or understand children. “Where are the rings?”

“Elgie, do you have the rings?” T’Mollek asked calmly. Elgie shook her head back and forth, her hand still to her mouth, theatrically stifling a laugh. “Elgie, where are the rings?”

“You dest hafta find ‘em!” Elgie answered in a sing-song voice.

“Find them. . . .”

“I buried ‘em _really_ good,” Elgie asserted proudly.

“You _buried_ them?” T’Mollek said, a little more loudly than she’d planned. Elgie's smile faded. She started to wonder if she was in trouble.

“ _You_ were the one who told her she could be the ring burier,” Q reminded her.

Thus ensued a rousing twenty-minute game of Find the Ring, which ended in the pumpkin patch. The ceremony continued. The rings were exchanged. And then there was a somewhat uncomfortable pause in which Picard made eye contact with T’Mollek as though letting her know it wasn’t legal or official yet. She still had the opportunity to back out.

But T’Mollek gave him a sincere smile and a nod of encouragement.

Picard sighed. “By the power vested in me by the United Federation of Planets, I now pronounce you . . . husband and wife.”

There was an awkward silence. T’Mollek looked uncertainly up at her husband, who enthusiastically exclaimed, “You may kiss the Q!”

 

[1] My eternal love


	8. Only Q

The reception was in full swing and a quartet was playing quietly on a stage set up near the barn. Data was singing “You Make Me Feel So Young,” at Q’s request. T’Mollek was enjoying the music until Q took her by the hand and led her to the microphone as well to sing along. She attempted to harmonize the last few lines, but she was not a professional singer.

At the end of the song, Q stepped to the microphone and said, “Let’s have a big hand for the android and my wife!”

The crowd applauded.

“But I think we can do better, don’t you?” Q continued. “Ladies and gentlemen . . . and Worf! I give you . . . Old Blue Eyes himself!”

A more-than-reasonable Q-created facsimile of a very young Frank Sinatra appeared on the stage, strode confidently toward Q, and took the mic. He whispered something to the band, and they began to play “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.”

As “Sinatra” began singing, T’Mollek and Data left the stage.

“Congratulations on your nuptial day,” he said as they descended the steps.

“Thank you,” she said, abashed. “You are the only crew member who has said that to me.”

“Is that not the appropriate greeting?” he asked.

“It is. But most of our colleagues believe this marriage is a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“They don't trust Q. They think he's going to take advantage of me. That I shouldn’t change who I am for him. That this will end badly for me.”

“What do you think?”

She said simply, “I think that I love him and I don't care.”

“Then that is all that matters. Congratulations again.”

“Thank you.” Data turned to leave and she stopped him. “Data?”

“Yes?” he said, turning back to her.

She had planned this for weeks but still didn’t know what words to say. So she simply went with, “I’m sorry.”

“Do not let it concern you,” he said. “Harmony in that key is particularly difficult to achieve.”

“No,” she said. “For deactivating you.”

“You made a logical choice in order to prevent me from presenting Negan with evidence of your betrayal, thus ensuring your eventual murder at his hands,” he said. “There is no apology necessary.”

“You didn't feel . . . used?” she asked, referring to the way she had taken him up on his kind but extremely inappropriate offer to placate her with sexual contact.

“I _was_ used,” he said. “I did not 'feel' anything.”

“Well . . . for what it's worth . . . I am sorry.”

With an almost imperceptible tilt of the head, Data replied, “Apology accepted,” and walked away.

As much as she still instinctively attempted to reject emotion, Data’s lack of emotionality always unnerved her. Perhaps she was seeing her own desire for pure stoicism reflected in him, and it felt unnatural to her.

She saw Deanna Troi step up to the punch bowl. T’Mollek strode over to the table and casually waited behind her to get a cup of punch as well. Deanna looked at her in greeting. She nodded to Deanna, who nodded back. T’Mollek repeatedly glanced up at Deanna but looked away whenever she made eye contact. She took nonchalant sips from her cup.

“T’Mollek, would you like me to make this easier for you?” Deanna finally said.

“Excuse me?”

“I could feel your guilt from across the yard,” she said. “You’ve let your guard down.”

“Oh,” T’Mollek said, blushing. “I had a chocolate milk.”

“It’s OK,” Deanna said. “I knew you were nudging my mind with suggestions to interrogate that Andorian courier on Earth.”

“You did?”

“I should have said something a long time ago. You have quite a gift.”

“Apparently strong telepathy is in my bloodline.”

“Yes,” Deanna said. “T’Sharr. The captain told me.”

“Yes,” T’Mollek said, ashamed.

“I wouldn’t feel too guilty about that, T’Mollek,” Deanna said. “If you had done anything _truly_ dangerous or committed any malfeasance, he would have treated you accordingly. He has been fighting for your right to be on the _Enterprise_ , to grow as a leader and as an officer, despite the suggestions _you_ were instilling in his first officer.”

“You knew about that as well?”

“No,” Deanna smiled. “But you just confirmed my suspicions.”

“It would seem I am more transparent than I realized,” T’Mollek said.

“I wouldn’t say that. But some of us—” She looked at Q, who was making his way toward them—“may just understand you better than you realize.”

T’Mollek asked her friend quickly and quietly, “Do you think I’m making a mistake?”

“Are you asking me so you can confirm your own doubts?” Deanna asked, ever the counselor.

“Are you sensing doubt in me?”

“Actually, I’m not,” she replied.

“Do you believe I should have?”

“T’Mollek, I believe we all have mistakes to make,” Deanna told her. “And I believe even more that we alone are responsible for determining whether our own actions are mistakes or not.”

“So, in less diplomatic terms, yes. You do.”

Deanna smiled. “I wish you well on your life’s journey. Wherever it may take you.”

“Thank you,” T’Mollek said. Deanna gave her a hug and left as Q approached.

Q sidled up to her and whispered, “Let’s blow this pop stand and get started on our honeymoon.”

“I am still facing a Starfleet inquiry and court-martial,” she reminded him.

“Honey, you don’t seem to grasp the concept of what being ‘Q’ means,” he said. “I can bend the fabric of space and time. And once you're part of the Continuum, you can too. You can live billions—trillions—oh, what am I saying . . . _infinite_ lifetimes and still be back before they bring out the cake.” He looked deeply into her eyes and said seriously, “We could go to the original opening night of _Hamilton_ right now.”

T’Mollek gaped at him a little tiny bit.

“I just blew your mind, didn’t I?”

“As tempting as that is,” T’Mollek said, pulling herself together, “I would still prefer to wait until after the inquiry.”

“Whatever you say.”

A bright flash of light from inside the barn caught their attention. When they entered the barn to investigate, they came face to face with a Romulan male.

“And you are . . .?” Q said sternly, protectively stepping in between his bride and the latecomer.

“I apologize for the uninvited arrival,” the man said in a friendly but nervous tone. “My name is Navik. I was a friend of Negan’s—from the Reunification movement on Romulus.”

“Of course,” T’Mollek said, stepping forward and shaking his head in greeting. “I am T’Mollek and this is my husband, Q.”

Q shook his hand suspiciously. He didn’t even like hearing the name “Negan.”

“I’ve risked a great deal coming here. I have a message from Romulus,” he continued, pulling a small object from the pocket of his cloak. “From your grandfather.”

T’Mollek and Q exchanged a look. She hastily looked out the door to make sure no one had seen or heard them. She led them into a back corner of the barn to watch the message.

Navik pressed a button on the player and a holographic image of Ambassador Spock appeared before them.

“Congratulations, T’Mollek and Q, on the day of your wedding,” Spock said, his sonorous voice even deeper and more authoritative than Picard’s. It was the closet T’Mollek had ever come to her legendary grandfather and the sound him saying her name took her breath away.

“I regret that I am unable to attend your celebration to give you this message in person,” he continued. “T’Mollek, I have been following your life and career from a distance. You have overcome a great deal, and particularly in the last year, you have honored your family.

“Galan was a good man. He loved your great-grandmother T’Hana, and he regretted his involvement in the atrocities that happened on Hellguard. He was responsible for the rescue of the survivors, and he personally entreated me to care for his daughter, Saavik. His loss is regrettable.”

T’Mollek’s heart skipped a beat. Galan actually had been her blood relative, not just a trusted family friend as he had implied.

“As for T’Hana’s sister . . .” Spock went on, his voice now grave. “T’Sharr is perhaps the greatest enemy of the reunification movement. She is not to be trusted, and you should consider any contact with her to be extremely dangerous. Her influence has set the cause back decades. Navik has forwarded a personal testimony to Starfleet Command. My hope is that this testimony will uncover enough evidence to convict T’Sharr of war crimes and ensure her incarceration.”

T’Mollek’s feeling of relief and renewed hope were overwhelming. Spock himself—through a recording—was to testify at her court martial.

“T’Mollek . . . Ceanna . . . I wish you peace and long life.” He held his hand up in the Vulcan salute.

It would dishonor Spock’s sense of logic to lift her hand and salute the hologram and return the greeting, she knew. But she did it anyway.

“Live long and prosper,” she whispered, hoping he would understand. The long pause held by Spock in the recording before it shut down told her he had probably expected it.

Navik handed her the player and with an apologetic grin, said, “I have to go now. Congratulations!” He pressed a button on his wristband and dematerialized.

Q put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “You know, that Spock is a pretty interesting character. I’d like to get together with him one day for a lively debate. We could sell tickets, record the whole thing, and distribute it to the masses. We could call it . . . “Q vs. Spock.”

“‘Spock vs. Q,’” T’Mollek countered.

“Whatever,” he said dismissively, following her out to the yard.


	9. EpiloQue

The investigation was swift. T’Mollek cooperated fully and presented all evidence against herself to Starfleet. Phillipa Louvois presided as magistrate at the court-martial. She was an old friend of Picard’s, and she was tough but extremely fair.

T’Sharr took the stand as an eyewitness but her spin on the story was different than T’Mollek’s.

_If there’s one thing a politician’s good at, it’s spin._

T’Mollek’s mind wandered as she listened to T’Sharr’s droning lies. She imagined Negan’s new life in the early 21st century. She guessed that he was athletic. That he worked closely with young people. That he was a role model. That he wanted to make the world a better, safer place for them.

But she also surmised that his experiences had left him somewhat damaged psychologically. Q had explained to her that although he retained his name and essential self during the transition to the alternate universe, his life in the 24th century would be forgotten.

An image appeared to her: Negan in bed, the middle of the night. He wore a long-sleeved black t-shirt emblazoned with two colorful feathers and the words “Water is life.”

A woman lay next to him. A beautiful woman. T’Mollek sensed a sweetness, a goodness. The woman coughed in her sleep.

“Lucille? You OK?”

“Can’t sleep,” she mumbled and coughed again.

Negan turned to her and raked his fingers through her hair until she relaxed and fell asleep.

T’Mollek smiled at the coincidence of his falling in love with a woman who shared the same name as his beloved antique baseball bat.

As Lucille dozed, Negan rolled over. He did a double take at the sight of a woman standing at the foot of his bed. Their eyes met and a slow grin of almost-recognition crept across Negan’s face. Startled, T’Mollek realized she wasn’t just imagining this scene. She had actually found him and was standing, in corporeal form, in his bedroom, in his universe.

She was becoming Q.

She almost immediately pulled herself away, realizing as she vanished that beside Negan’s bed, a much newer baseball bat leaned against his nightstand.

***

T’Sharr’s testimony was damaging, but to T’Mollek’s surprise, an affidavit from Galan had been sent to the Judge Advocate General’s office at Starbase 173. In it, he described the nature of his relationship with T’Sharr, their twenty-five-year conspiracy to assassinate Negan, and T’Sharr’s manipulative telepathic abilities.

Most shocking of all, Mirek’s sister herself, Liviana Charvanek, appeared on the stand alongside Spock via the video testimony forwarded to Starfleet Command by Navik. In it, they testified that both T’Auvilyn and T’Mollek had been completely justified in their actions on Romulus and on Nimbus III.

Liviana explained that T’Sharr had conspired with Mirek to kill T’Auvilyn, who was a Reunification sympathizer. T’Sharr’s belief was that T’Auvilyn had used her mental influence to convince Negan to campaign for the cause. T’Sharr believed that together they would influence Starfleet and create a civil war, with factions sympathetic to the Romulan underground. This in turn would cause the Romulans in power to wage war against Starfleet.

T’Sharr furthered this conspiracy, Liviana testified, by gaining control of T’Mollek—changing her name and controlling her mind to remain loyal only to her. In return, T’Sharr sent her to Mirek on a silver platter.

As a result of all testimony presented, T’Sharr was placed under arrest. T’Mollek was exonerated of all crimes and retained her status as a Starfleet officer.

After her court-martial, however, she resigned her commission.

***

T’Mollek took to life in the Continuum surprisingly well.

A natural introvert, her new existence allowed her to visit other worlds and other times in a variety of guises. Much like an actor on a stage, she was able to lose herself in different roles, learning other perspectives and cultures along the way.

She lived countless lives, start to finish, on countless planets and planes.

She bore a child. A female, whom they named Auvi-Q.

But before all of this, she had the single most fulfilling experience of her entire existence, both before her life in the Continuum and after—she attended opening night of the Broadway musical _Hamilton_ with its original cast.

As she and Q departed the theatre, a massive spherical carriage was waiting for them on the street. Dressed in a sparkling light blue gown and glass slippers, she stepped up into the carriage, holding onto her prince’s hand.

The footman closed the carriage door and Q let out a yelp of pain.

“What happened?” T’Mollek asked.

Q sighed and looked at her ruefully. “I got my foot caught in the door.”

The drove off down the streets of New York to the start of their new adventures.

THE END


End file.
